For fans of:  Rita Mae Brown, Joanne Fluke, Alice Kimberly

When dog-walker Ellie Engleman is invited to be her best friend Vivian’s plus-one at her sister’s wedding, she jumps at the chance; she hasn’t taken a vacation in ten years, and a summer trip to the Hamptons sounds like just what the doctor ordered.  But then the groom is murdered on the eve of the ceremony, and Ellie’s forced to face the fact that this particular getaway is going to be anything but relaxing.  Before she left home, she promised her NYPD detective boyfriend she wouldn’t get mixed up in any more criminal investigations, but when the tearful bride begs Ellie to help catch her fiancé’s killer, she can’t bring herself to say no.  Are Ellie’s sleuthing skills up to the task, or will this investigation truly be her last?

Till Death Do Us Bark is the fifth of Judi McCoy’s Dog Walker Mysteries. I’ll admit, I initially had some trouble swallowing the central conceit of the series (Ellie can communicate with dogs, and they with her), but once I got past that hurdle, I rather enjoyed this book.  The plot is clever, the mystery is intriguing, and the sweet relationship between Ellie and her dog Rudy is bound to warm the heart of any animal-lover.  McCoy’s storytelling style is a bit digressive at times (particularly during the first half of the book) and her prose is occasionally littered with a few too many extraneous details, but for the most part, this tale speeds right along.

Ellie’s a determined and likable (if nosy and somewhat judgmental) heroine.  Her two canine sidekicks are a little over the top, but amusing nonetheless.  And the more unsavory members of the cast – particularly Vivian’s slutty, snotty sister Adrianne – are pitch-perfect in their villainy and help keep the book from becoming too precious.  Main suspect Tomas is a little too much of a two-dimensional stereotype for my liking, and I full-on hated the glimpse we got of Ellie’s domineering, condescending boyfriend Sam, but McCoy has otherwise populated Till Death Do Us Bark with a fun and realistic group of characters.

I likely would have given this book an eight were it not for the ending.  For some reason, while McCoy uses Ellie to narrate 99% of the book, she switches away from this point of view at the climax of the tale and instead relates this key scene from the perspective of a character not physically present for any other part of the story.  Not only does this ruin the tale’s flow, but it drains the life out of what should have been a tense, dramatic, action-filled scene.

~ Kat